'Orange is the New Black' looks pretty sharp

Jul. 10, 2013
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Former 'Star Trek: Voyager' captain Kate Mulgrew, left, is barely recognizable as scene-stealing prison kitchen matron Red, one of the many inmates Piper (Taylor Schilling) offends her first few days in the joint. / Paul Schiraldi Photography

by Robert Bianco, USA TODAY

by Robert Bianco, USA TODAY

You hear "women in prison" story, and chances are your mind spins off in multiple directions, few of them good. You think wild melodrama (Caged) or crude exploitation (Chained Heat), or grim excess (think an all-female Oz) or flop sitcom (Women in Prison), or some camp classic starring a man in drag (ah, if only Divine were alive today).

Well, think again.

Instead, what you get from Jenji Kohan's (Weeds) unexpectedly affecting new 13-episode series is a true rarity: a deft mix of comedy and drama in which the prison feels like a real place and the women are actual people, rather than a thinly veiled excuse to stage catfights, lesbian fantasies and sexual assault. As with Weeds, Kohan is telling the story of a white, middle-class woman who must suddenly cope with career criminals, but this time there's a sad undertone to the story that makes the tale seem that much more relatable.

Based on a memoir by Piper Kerman, Orange stars an immediately empathetic Taylor Schilling as Piper Chapman -- a nice, blond, artisanal soap entrepreneur headed to prison for a mistake she had hoped was buried in her secretive past. Ten years before, she had allowed her then-lover Alex (Laura Prepon) to talk her into smuggling drug money -- a fling that is about to cost her 15 months of freedom, thanks to Alex giving up Piper's name as part of her own plea bargain.

As we cut back and forth from the present to the past, we see the life Piper led with Alex, the world she's about to enter -- and the life she's temporarily giving up with her surprised but supportive fiancé, Larry (a funny, appealing turn by Jason Biggs). With witty efficiency, Kohan conveys both what Piper is losing and how unprepared she is for where she's going: Her two top requests for Larry is that he update her webpage and that he refrain from watching Mad Men without her.

She's frightened, of course, and it's also to Orange's credit that while her worst TV-fueled fears are unfounded ("This isn't Oz," a comforting social worker tells her), she does have an ordeal ahead that we can readily understand. She has to learn to deal with confinement and with her fellow prisoners -- including the Russian kitchen matron, Red (a scene-stealing Kate Mulgrew), she immediately offends.

In other shows, Red might simply be an antagonist device. But the more time we spend in prison, the more we grow to understand her -- a task made easier by Mulgrew's excellent performance -- along with the other women and the society they've been forced to form. Even in a minimum-security prison, threats abound, but not to the extent that they blind you to the humanity of the prisoners.

Whether it's worth paying to spend time with them in that prison if you're not already a Netflix subscriber is a question only you and your bank account can answer. But if you are currently paying Netflix a fee, your membership just became more rewarding.